Monday, August 22, 2005

Word of the Day for Monday August 22, 2005

vicissitude \vih-SIS-ih-tood; -tyood\, noun:
1. Regular change or succession from one thing to another;
alternation; mutual succession; interchange.
2. Irregular change; revolution; mutation.
3. A change in condition or fortune; an instance of mutability
in life or nature (especially successive alternation from one
condition to another).

This man had, after many vicissitudes of fortune, sunk at
last into [1]abject and hopeless poverty.
--Thomas Macaulay

Max had rescued his father's gold watch through every
vicissitude, but as it didn't go I took it to a watchmaker.
--Edith Anderson, [2]Love in Exile: An American Writer's
Memoir of Life in Divided Berlin

It has come about that this writer, who at the beginning
might have appeared in unique occupation of a marginal and
peripheral world, is instead writing from the center of a
historical vicissitude, utterly contemporary.
--Elizabeth Hardwic, "Meeting [3]V. S. Naipaul"
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Vicissitude comes from Latin vicissitudo, from vicissim, in
turn, probably from vices, changes.

Synonyms: alternation, inconstancy, fluctuation. [4]Find more
at Thesaurus.com.

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